The One Thing You Don’t Want to Miss

Sometimes I’m really a downer, I know.

I felt it myself not long ago when I read a Facebook advertisement by a well-meaning Christian personality. She was advertising workshops to help women discover God’s wonderful, unique plan for each of them.

I get it. I’m not opposed to the concept. If you go to this workshop, I’m confident you’ll be blessed and God will work through it and through you. I want God’s wonderful plan for me. I do believe God wants us freed to be our individual unique selves, the ideas of us He had in His mind at our conception.

But, here’s the downer part: today I tried to imagine Betsie ten Boom signing up for this seminar and I worried that our cultural perspective is skewed, so focused on self-actualization and personal fulfillment that we set ourselves up to miss God’s perspective on what His plan may actually be for our lives this side of glory.

I’ll bet Betsie ten Boom had dreams. I’ll bet she had heart desires, talents, gifts, hidden skills, yearnings of the soul and she clearly sought after God. She was Christ-like, heroic, daring, and brave when she and her sister, Corrie, risked everything to hide Jews from the Nazis. I’m sure she made every dangerous choice prayerfully trusting God all the way.

But as it turns out, God’s plan for Betsie led through Ravensbruck concentration camp in Nazi Germany. In that camp, Betsie testified to others that Jesus was present, even there, and she received visions of the work she and her sister would do once they were freed but Corrie pursued those visions alone because Betsie died in Ravensbruck. She was freed but not to life on earth. This was God’s wonderful plan for Betsie’s life this side of glory.

One day, we will all see the wonder of it but there is no romanticizing a death surrounded by cruelty, mistreatment, and bondage in a lice-infested concentration camp far from comfort and loved ones. If Betsie had been pursuing her “wonderful” life, she might have missed the true object of her life’s pursuit – Jesus Christ. In finding her Savior, she found life that transcended even a miserable death beneath the boot of evil. As that boot descended onto her throat, she cried out her testimony for Jesus Christ. We can still hear her voice today.

So, I think it’s okay to pursue our unique callings but our primary pursuit should always be Jesus. We need to be careful that we aren’t so busy seeking our wonderful life that we forget to serve Him and those around us in the moment. Betsie ten Boom served her fellow prisoners and testified to the presence of Jesus Christ in the bowels of the Nazi killing machine – that’s a wonderful life – the likes of which I pray I’m spared, but it brings me needed perspective in this modern age of personal glory.

When Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego were about to be thrown in the fiery furnace for refusing to bow down to false gods, they made this proclamation: “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand. But even if he does not, we want you to know, Your Majesty, that we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” Daniel 3:17-18

Even if I don’t find my wonderful personal calling, even if I die in a concentration camp, even if I’m thrown into a fire, there is only One God and this God IS life. So if we want life – it’s Him we want. THAT’s what you don’t want to miss, loved ones.

The One Thing You Don't Want to Miss https://t.co/dEjNNhaNuU Are you pursuing a what or a Who? #amwriting #Christian #seekinglife

— Lori Roeleveld (@lorisroeleveld) April 14, 2016